Capturing

The forcible taking of ships as slaves is called capturing.

Before you can capture a ship you need to have Remote Control skill equal or exceeding the tech level of the ship. You also need to be able to use all of the gear equipped on the ship, for example if the ship has a tech 6 cloak equipped, you must have Cloaking 6.

To capture a ship, attack it as normal, but use a radiation weapon for the final shot that reduces its shield to zero. A circular explosion of small lines indicates that the ship is now disabled and ready to be captured. Shoot the disabled ship with a Prismatic Conversion or a Corsair's Converter to turn the ship into a slave.

If the above method does not work, there are several possible reasons for failure.

• If the ship is immune to radiation weapons, the shields will never be reduced below zero.
• You might not have sufficient slave slots for the new slave (see Remote Control).
• The ship may not be "capturable" (see the list of capturable ships).
• The ship may not have sufficient free space for the Prismatic Controlbot (size 3) fired from the Prismatic Conversion. Some AI ships have no extra hull space with their regular gear, so they can only be captured with a capacity augmenter equipped or with miniaturized gear.

Radiation Experts can capture ships that are not capturable and capture capture above their RC level up to their skill in Radiation Expert, but is unable to dock these "wild" slaves.

"Capturable" is a slang term used to tell whether or not a certain ship can be possessed forcibly.